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Friday, December 31, 2004

(Yesterday haven said (about my last post) “just the tip of the iceberg.” Coincidentally Bruce intuited that I had intended a follow-up. They were both right. It’s interesting how minds link up but it isn’t surprising considering there is only one of them. Ci-inc made reference to a shared understanding between us and that is also true. As I have been told, he was later mocked for it as he had posted it elsewhere; all things in good time.)

These times in which we live dance like a drunken jester at the cliffs edge. Uncertainty is everywhere and further complicated by the great confusion of rebellious hearts and minds which, in a temporary state of assumed security, imagine that they are sunning themselves on a peaceful beach; individually and collectively.

Life is metaphor and pregnant with emerging combinations which impact on every little destiny in accordance with their assumptions of what is real. What is real is God and what proceeds from God is a balancing act; a constant adjusting. It would be better for the prancing fool if he were not drunk on bad wine; if he were not a dry drunk convincing himself he was not drunk; if he were drunk on the wine of God.

I take no pleasure in comeuppance, but comeuppance is certain. It is all a matter of adjustment. When the lightning strikes the false tower- and it will –it is just equilibrium at work. Equilibrium is the basis of the great work; in the affairs of the world and individually as well.

A summing up is at hand in the greater life and the individual life. It may exhilarate and it may utterly destroy. The outcome is determined by the relationship and whatever intransigence there may be; whatever the distance that exists between the minds idea of itself and the one minds idea of it.

The full picture of what is going on behind the curtains is unknown generally. Many industrious agendas behind the curtains believe this to be a safeguard. But when every object, every phenomena is formed out of the body of God; when all consciousness takes place within the originating consciousness; the mind of God. When God is ahead of, within and behind all things, there is no hiding place to be found. There are no secrets but one.

While humanity is looking for dangers from identified and familiar quarters; which dangers are manufactured to some degree from quarters other than those identified, the real danger isn’t seen at all; back to the safe sunny beach. Two days after the major tsunami and the multitudes of bodies, tourists once again sun themselves upon the beaches- even while cleanup and mourning proceeds apace. Here is a real insight into human nature.

What do you suppose happens when you warn a drunken dancer about the cliffs edge? What happens when you tell a man who says that he doesn’t drink that he is still quite drunk?

When civilization is in order –though such an event is rare- there is a unity of mind. Lao Tzu addresses this better than anyone in The Way of Life (Witter Bynner edition please). When civilization is way out of order; out of balance; in universal sanpaku, then balancing is axiomatic... certain. When a drunk who thinks he is not drunk goes about in reactive drunken anger, balancing is certain.

Everything is mind and there is only one; so from that mind comes the balancing force. That could mean anything; tsunamis, earthquakes, plagues, wars, famine; or all of them. It could happen anywhere and as you have seen, without warning. Although there was warning wasn’t there?

God is the heart of the integrity of all things. God holds it together and pulls it apart.

"The universal nature out of the universal substance, as if it were wax, now molds the figure of a horse, and when it has broken this up, it uses the material for a tree, next for a man, next for something else; and each of these things subsists for a very short time. But it is no hardship for the vessel to be broken up, just as there was none in its being fastened together.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.

There are always signs and we have had signs a plenty; environmental disorders (laughed at), dietary insanities, ubiquitous alcoholism and drug frenzy, wild sensation seeking and the extreme Yin end of ambiguous sexual polarity- all of it championed by offended adherents; all speaking great imbalance. The breaking down of longstanding religious traditions and the cementing of ridiculous dogma and cant by the luddite mind, along with the bankruptcy of their mercantile focus, all speak of a major revelation upon the horizon.

Whenever excessive materialism has raised its bestial head; when the actual purpose of life has become so obscured and the people enslaved to that ancient god infernal; the real power is soon to make a practical demonstration. The false prophet is everywhere afoot; “deceiving even the elect” as it were. Understanding the Bible is predicated upon understanding the cyclic nature of events. There is no one golden Calf, no one moment, now past, for all the tales of cataclysm and warning; they repeat.

Among all of the relevant quotes in the Bible (I’m not a Christian in the traditional sense but I am a scholar; however poor.) one stands out in respect of this offering. I cannot recall it verbatim but it goes something like this; “two men will be standing in a field and one will be taken and one will be left. It goes on to give other examples of the same.

Every spot on Earth is holy ground. Every particle is sacred. Every particle is imbued with the presence of God; herein is the grand secret of the alchemical art. It knows you are standing there. It knows you as yourself while you are standing there. It knows everything about you and it knows it now. It knows from where you are come and where you are bound. Through every pedestrian event; in every circumstance profane or sublime, it stands central in the midst of the moment. It is unknown to your separated mind. However apart you are from it in your thinking is how tense the rubber band is and how severe the snap-back. It’s really all physics. ‘Meta’ is only the inquiry into the consciousness behind force. This is why you may go undisturbed amidst the clamor. Keep your heart where you wish your fortune to be. Let go of striving and let your real self do the work. This is all you have to do. It is much, much closer than you think; in every sense.

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Over the last several years, slightly preceding the rise of bush and the suborning of The American Constitution, fascism has been on the rise worldwide; Sharon coming to power in Israel after sparking the Intifada, Pen vying for power in France, Heider in Austria, Stoiber in Germany and movements elsewhere as well. The primary cause of the rise to power is the force of global corporations and the immense disparity between the rich and poor in combination with explosive population growth.

Much of the problem with the poor peoples of the world comes about through foreign and domestic exploitation, crippling debt and this is all exacerbated by conflicts engineered by foreign powers with the willing collusion of their domestic leaders. These conflicts have spawned massive refugee migrations to First World countries and the problems of assimilation have driven the political fortunes of fascists.

You can get more dense and precise about this but I’m in the ballpark. I’m not going to delve too deeply into the geopolitical game of Risk. It really comes down to protecting the private property and obscene wealth of the privileged classes. Whenever these forces, which control information and media are challenged on their behavior they scream “class warfare” as bush has done. The ministries of Public Disinformation are about the business of turning reality on its head and attacking the opposition with the very claims most applicable to themselves.

Recently a flack from the House of Lords in England wrote a bizarre piece for either Time or Newsweek in which he drew comparisons between bush and blair and Roosevelt and Churchill. He said when we know what we don’t know; this newest finest hour bunch will be candidates for Rushmore. “Thank you; I will have another helping of sautéed bullshit.”

All budding and earnest fascists know that you have to control the sources of information and entertainment. The one has to be uniformedly supportive and the other banal in the extreme. You also need a boogeyman that you can trot out whenever you need him. Bin Laden is your go to guy. Odds are Bin Laden has been dead a long time. The other option is that he was an asset all along. Israel has been setting up, and getting caught at setting up, Al Qaeda cells. Cui bono?

Your Jason the Hockey Mask Boy has to make regular statements and bad reception appearances so that the nation can be kept in a state of tension about imminent attacks that never occur. It doesn’t matter if experts debunk these things, or if experts prove that Bin Laden didn’t say all the things he is supposed to say. Most people have no interest in inquiry. Most people go along. It’s the patriotic thing to do; pause for cheering crowds, flag waving, flag draped bodies, rousing speeches by fat boys in suits; cue to vague shadowy threats of rampant immorality, religious differentials and the need to be tight and warm and locked in the cellar.

The fact that no forensic teams were allowed at Ground Zero in New York while Mr. Oops I Guess I’m not Going to be Homeland Security Czar was porking his publisher with a window view isn’t interesting. The fact that all the metals and debris were hauled away under guard and/or melted down or buried and then the metal shipped immediately far away to India isn’t interesting. The temperature that jet fuel burns at isn’t interesting. The fact that nearly half of the hijackers weren’t even on the plane isn’t interesting. The logistics of flying those planes at the speed they were flown and all the sundry difficulties involved measured against the actual experience of the given pilots isn’t interesting. The change some months earlier in the chain of command of who should call out fighter jets in the case of such an emergency and the subsequent failure to do so by the party of the first part is not interesting. The discovery of Mohammed Atta’s passport on the ground following the planes incineration above isn’t interesting. The discovery of a Flying for Dummies videotape and a Koran in the hijackers car at Logan airport (what? They were boning up last minute with the VCR- powered off the cigarette lighter- on flying technique?) nah, that isn’t interesting. The thousand and one other things that have also come to light isn’t interesting either. Neither is all of the election fraud of the last three elections.

It might be useful to think of ignorance as a living thing; and it has armies too, which not only clash by night but in the daytime as well. Still, it’s always dark there anyway; it’s as dark as the dungeon which purpose it serves.

Malice and greed are living things too, vast bodies that squat above and within the minds of the acolytes of ignorance. Ignorance is the primary, all the others follow. Wars are feeding grounds. If you had the psychic apparatus working you could see the ghouls and other astral larvae feeding among the dead.

Those who make wars are often thought to be working from a profit motive or a variety of ancillary motivations given out from the Press Secretary after the rhetoric has been hammered out at a think tank. The recent war in Iraq was justified by virtue of an immediate threat to national security. It was a good bid on the heels of the WTC attacks. As the blatant lies were revealed the motivation shifted, shifted again and then shifted again. The clutch was smoking but it didn’t burn out. But really, this war was about providing food for them as eat’s it.

Do the makers of war know this? You won’t go broke betting that some of them do. Of course this is all science fiction for most of you; if you were interested which, we know you are not. It’s ironic about that Skull and Bones moniker. It’s further ironic -forgetting for a moment that irony is dead- how the Skull and Bones stalking horse bowed out with nary a whimper. But remember, none of these things are organized or intended; they just happen randomly- it’s just coincidence.

Okay, we know that the vast majority that has bought into the game are just fodder for whatever’s on the way. They’re sunning themselves on their own beaches somewhere while the ocean broods, or they are toiling in the pits and repeating, “Can I have another one Sir!” If you make any effort to loosen the shackles they will beat you to death with the chains and drag your body before their masters for a “good doggy” or two. Sometimes it just has to play out.

But what about you? You know better. You know what’s up. Ah well... We really have to go back over the last several posts for the answer to that one. The key thing to remember, besides remembering, is that you got more power in your one little heart than they got in all the tanks in front of you. Whatever is going to result is not what they expect. Sometimes when you look at things the way they are you just have to shake your head at the seemingly pointless condition achieved after all those thousands of years of struggle and hard work. If it really were the way that the reavers who believe in nothing but themselves says it is, you might have cause to worry. You ever see that poster of Meher Baba that was around in the sixties? Bobby McFerrin wrote a song about it; “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”? There just might be something to that.

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

I may go on for quite a pace today. Even so, I won’t cover what I have in mind ...but if I can just outline some of the countryside...

We encounter a lot of royalty on this planet. We’ve got the English Queen and the Black Nobility with the dense spider-webbed sub matrix of ‘The City’. We’ve got the Duke of Earl, King Creole, Queen Latifa and Prince; no last name, formerly a symbol.

We’ve got Knights and Rohan’s and knaves. We’ve got Lady’s in Waiting and men in ambush and we’ve even got those of us who Am not Bush and hopefully never will be. We’ve got the truly royal and the pretend royalty; mostly we have the cast of The King of Hearts running amuck through the costume closet and its’ “bad, it’s nationwide.” to quote an old rock artist. If any of us are sane we are laboring in the film of the King of Hearts. If you haven’t seen the film with Alan Bates, you should. It explains things to a degree.

The first thing any psychiatrist should concern himself with is protecting himself from contracting the sicknesses of his patients. The broadcasts can be intense. You’ve really got to use the fine tuning dial and program the tuner to skip certain stations. Unless you do you will pick them up because they tune to you.

Some stations have a hundred thousand watts and more. Some have only a few watts and Clear Channel is anything but. They don’t care much for sentiments contrary to their efforts at mind control and they’re hip to the power of music as a magical art. Some stations have been in business for millenniums. You don’t even know you are listening; feel gloomy today? ...depressed ...feel better than you thought you would for no discernable reason? Think about it. What shapes you, in the short term, over the long term?

I possess a degree of clairsentience. It’s not nearly as sharp as some. It’s a deal sharper than most. I didn’t know what was happening to me for some time. But all waters clear if you don’t stir them up.

When I posted at Slate Fray forums I could feel the thoughts of other participants. It was uncanny and often unpleasant. I got a letter from a poster there several weeks ago. He went on at length about how much he liked and respected me. I knew otherwise however. I knew why he was writing and what he really thought. This fellow doesn’t like me at all, but there you go. It’s not important that he should, nor required. What is required is that I know.

Sometimes I felt good there but mostly I felt slimed. Whatever my real intentions were I could not avoid the sensation of ‘mucking about’. You don’t scream “reality” in a crowded theater. It doesn’t make them bad people that they don’t like you. They don’t know any better which is why they are certain that they do. It’s more their turf than it is yours because the turf itself is a marketplace regardless of the illusion of free thought. The carpet underneath is about money. It’s called the bottom line. A prostitute is never going to appreciate someone who got a better deal.

Due to a particular analytical ability I know just what people think of me individually. I’m far more telepathic than I am clairsentient. All appearances aside, I get the message loud and clear no matter what the words may be saying. Surely all of you experience this to a lesser or greater degree. You can tell, more or less.

In some respects I was remarkably callow until fairly recently. It isn’t that the powers weren’t working but they were consonant with a fair amount of self-deception. Chalk it up to a form of innocence that either didn’t know or didn’t want to know. That isn’t the case anymore.

When people mean us well or ill, we feel it. It affects our mood. Some of what we get is personally intended and some of it comes out of the general well. You don’t have to be a bad person to catch shit. Many people of the time hated Jesus Christ and neither you nor I are Jesus Christ; not by a long shot; not yet. For those who Love much, much is forgiven. For those who Love, opposition and enmity are certain. To Love is to crucify hate. It’s automatic. Trust me, they don’t like it. It burns them. I’ve gotten far more enmity from what I say than for who I am. I’m not special but the things I talk about are. It is the enemy of the state. It can’t help that. The state is reshaped because of it and that compromises certain vested interests.

It’s good for all of us to remember that when we feel waves of hate and sorrow; get pictures of people; find these people in our heads; feel ourselves striving against them and all the permutation thereof that we are receiving broadcasts. Love is the shield. It is the only 24/7 effective shield. Love is a neutralizing agent. It’s also a mirror. An argument with a person in your presence may not have it’s origin in either of you. Watch, watch and listen.

It is very hard in the midst of reactive exchange to let go. But tell me; would you rather be right or happy? Is the cost of the affair worth the aftermath? Your greatest enemy is your reactive mind; if we could control the need to react, what a thing that would be. Surely there are those personalities external to us whose presumed status, sense of privilege and sense of self are challenged by our very existence. But their power to consistently hurt you is only possible through your reactive mind. If you seize upon what they send, thereby identifying with it, it can injure you.

An exhaustive treatise on this and its extenuations would prove to be both much longer and exhausting. There is enough here for the general outline; better that we ‘flesh it out’ with the results of the desire to understand. The world is in a desperate state at this time and many souls have given in to the pressure to become relay stations; repeating towers. A gram of Love has more power than a hundred tons of hate and hate has no defense against Love. Only fear can supplant Love and fear cannot live where Love abides. This particular maintenance is your chief responsibility to yourself and the world at large. Love, like anything, increases with attention; much as plants proliferate beneath the sun. If you don’t have enough you had better get some more. You really can take as much as you wish and your capacity to contain it will increase with the addition. Love will protect you. You really have no other armies equal to the task.

PART II

I’ve compared the mind to an airport. It could as well be exampled as a city, a leech-field or an ocean. I like the idea of an airport in this case, though all of them could as easily apply. You are the air traffic controller. It’s your job to determine which planes should land and take off. You’re the customs control as well.

We’re going to be thinking airports and oceans for the most part here.

Most people think that their thoughts are their own. And they often judge themselves according to the quality of their thoughts. They identify with their thoughts. Often they fight their thoughts as if their thoughts were an unwelcome or unwholesome part of themselves. When Wordsworth said that, “most men live lives of quiet desperation” he was spot on.

But your mind is only a fenced in area of a much larger area. It’s actually an illusion to begin with. It’s that place where you have determined ‘I am I’. Think of your mind as containing an estuary at one point. All individual minds contain an estuary into the great sea. Depending on inclination depends what you are accessing. So you could say that, to some degree, your thoughts have something to do with you but it doesn’t mean they belong to you.

You’ve made yourself what you are by a process of selection and rejection. Sometimes you are more vigorous in attention and sometimes you are lazy. It’s a common condition except among exceptional souls. Exceptional souls possess a greater understanding of process and conditions. They’re dealing with the same things everyone else is dealing with but they do it differently.

I’ve mentioned certain techniques that are effective in bringing one to an exceptional state but I will assume that most people who hear about these techniques will have one of several reactions; they’ll think it’s a good idea but they’ll just go right on the way they’ve been going, they’ll dismiss it out of hand because they know better and no one is going to tell them what to do or they’ll be thinking about something else the whole time they are hearing about it and just gloss over it.

Some few will attempt to apply these techniques but will run up against the inertia that attends new projects and it will become a dust-catcher like the guitar in the closet and whatever temporary objects of ambition there might have been. What none of them are realizing is that they are already doing something in this regard but it isn’t as effective or it’s flat out wrong. You’re not saving time or turning a corner by repeating yourself in an incoherent fashion; talking to yourself isn’t a bad thing but it’s pointless if you don’t understand what you’re saying.

Let’s say you’ve got a room and it’s so full of objects that you can hardly move around in there. Well, if you’re happy like that, fine. But let’s say you’re not happy. The smart thing to do would be to empty the room completely and then selectively re-introduce the things you want to keep; maybe add some new things. Then you throw away or sell off what you don’t want. It’s like a new start. You might want to add a big window to bring in more light. What you want is to get the room just the way you like it. You also want to maintain a sense of space so you can move around; dance if you like. Space is good.

Some of the airlines that have been landing at your airport have been doing business with you for some time. Just because you send a plane or two away doesn’t mean they aren’t going to continue to try to land. Certain passengers have been doing business in your town for years; they are accustomed to entry. Nothing is accomplished without consistency except confusion. Once again, if you are perfectly happy and content with conditions, fine. Most people are not. So you either do something about it or not. And let me add again; you are already doing something. Everything in your life is controlled in the tower. Everything outside you is controlled by the tower. Who’s in the tower? Sometimes lightning hits the tower. A moment of epiphany will come, tomorrow, or in a hundred thousand years. Some rely on the hope of a greater evolution. Some take the reins in hand. Some control the borders. You’ve heard the phrase, “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”.

If george w. bush says something and you agree with it, if you support it, you’ve made arrangements to get together with bush at a point where the things you have agreed on are balanced out on the scales of reality. Wherever you agree with something you have made a contract. Everything you say and do is part of a contract. Going along with things can lead all sorts of places.

If bush wanted to hang out with you; invited you to the White House; would you go? He’s at the top of the game right now. Conventional wisdom says there’s a profit to be made here. Many people seek to curry favor here. It’s an exclusive buffet line. Diana dreamed very hard about being a princess. How did that work out? Try to remember that what’s outside your head is inside your head as well; as within so without, as above so below. If someone thinks it’s a good idea to go kill a few hundred thousand people and you agree with that, you’ve made a contract to get together on the killing fields to carry it out somewhere down the road. Believe it. War is a constant- inside your head and outside your head. Clever deferments work for the moment. Many people think that if they bypassed something that they have bypassed it altogether. But you can’t simultaneously make war and avoid war. Cancer is an army of insurgents. Someone with a phony passport at the customs line is a virus and may well be a terrorist.

You are bush, inasmuch as you support him. You are Gandhi inasmuch as you emulate him. Our personalities are quite flexible. They are built up out of our belief systems. We are what we think we are.

One who stands at the gate of the mind and controls what leaves and enters is in command of all directions ongoing; is, to a degree, in control of the phenomenal world. Mastery is the state of one who is in control of thought, speech and action. Discrimination is the key. You have to know what is what and that is determined by what you believe in. So where do you get your value system? On what do you base your code of conduct? What do you want? A good determinant is to look at lives lived and decide if the result of that life agrees with you; if that’s a course you’d like to take. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Monday, December 27, 2004

Thousands of people died in Asia due to an Earthquake and tidal waves. Was that as many people as died in Asia anyway on that day; in the world? Was it less than the general average? I expect we would find great killers move among us whom we do not notice as such. They are the Great Whites that cruise the ocean of life every day.

Many tourists were sunning themselves on the beach when the ocean just came out of nowhere and grabbed them. It makes you think. The news organizations were overjoyed. Rupert Murdoch, Lord Rhees Mogg (now there’s a name from the real time Lord of the Rings) and Conrad Black, among others, sent their minions in search of coverage. Britt Hume practices his gravitas. Faces disappear in the rear view mirror. Take the total deaths in Rwanda and divide by the days of slaughter and you’ve got another tidal wave that rolled for months. The Congo has the greatest sustained tidal wave and it’s nowhere near the ocean.

Iraq; I’m not sure if that’s a tidal wave or an undertow... a riptide? I close my eyes and see blood red full moons pulling at the waters of the world. Pale horses are bearing the dead in long processions into the moon’s wide mouth. The seamstress of the shadow-land is weaving the new envelopes in which to stuff another dreaming puppet. The helix half disappears. All we see are the goings in and the comings out.

Underground fires smolder in the wings. Daily they are increased by the collective contributions of thoughts fed under the pressure of life into the tight compartments of potential. Here and there a pustulence breaks upon the surface. One hotspot follows another. These are the days of our lives. This is the industry in which we are engaged.

Let’s think of our thoughts as a stock portfolio. Every day and every night we add to our holdings. We are diversified. So much goes into the racial memory; so much goes into personal grievance, so much into fear, so much into hunger futures, so much in the general confusion fund, so much is contributed to false ideals and structures based upon nothing but a collective belief in the unreal. We’re a growth industry. Is it any wonder that cancer is one of our most impressive products? We’re talking blue chip.

Everything we say drops into the well of the vital soul. There it outlines the parameters of event, fencing in the environment for recurrent Karma. The blueprint is on the table. The draftsman bends over the table. The machine shop awaits the plans.

Everything we do is more of an engraving; an actual cut upon the formless. Some sculptors work on a private creation. Elsewhere thousands move over a large bank of clay; carving out an entire city destined for their inhabitation. They’ll have music and movies. They’ll have a history as the scroll unfolds. There will be wars and trials and parades aplenty. Men will swear oaths and women will weep over incomprehensible losses. They’ll live out this history as it was written according to the collective agreement of whatever it was they agreed to. Poof! There they are. And poof, there they go. Of course it’s not a time lapse scenario. But it will rise up and it will fall back and the dead leaves will twist and gutter down the streets and sidewalks. Ten thousand years of dust will cover them until the men with maps and pick hammers and brushes come to read what they can from what evidence they find. But they won’t learn anything. They’re building cities of their own.

They will build these cities and towns. They will draft documents and pass laws. They will compromise the documents and they will break the laws.

Occasional madmen will come upon the scene and point out the inconsistencies and they will be driven into the hills or raised up upon a cross. In a hundred years they will become the heroes of a renaissance and their words will be gospel as their words are reinterpreted to fit the needs of the architects of the following wind.

There will be great speeches in dark hours. The soul of the people will rise to face each shadow that grows on the borders or in the midst. Dramatists will repeat these speeches on temporary stages and hearts will swell at remembered heroics and bloody deeds. Flags will wave in the thundering sky and men will rouse themselves to final acts of glory against pitiless time.

Love will flower in every age and at the breaking of each new day. Love will struggle and endure though every bitter trial. Love will be made all the greater by comparison but only recognized long after the fact. Lovers will drift on separate boats across immeasurable seas while the memory reshapes the circumstance into a dream. Love will be broken into a million pieces and every piece will be the whole of Love. In the end, the only thing that will remains will be the Love. It will shine upon the face of its containment or it will glow like the most distant star, far, far away in the incalculable depths of the hearts that have abandoned it. But it will never go out. There is no life without this Love, though the life has no thought of its existence. It continues all the same.

The arrogant mind and its wide ambitions will forever fall short of this Love. This Love will stay perfect and apart as madness does from the mind of reason, like a seashell beyond the seas reach. It will remain unchanged regardless of the brutish nature shaping demons from its rutting need. And everything will be shaped according to it in the time that it takes to accomplish it. Every dark creation, every misshapen form will be worn into beauty like the honeycombed cliffs by the unseen hand of the wind.

No one who has ever lived can accomplish more than to allow this Love to work. The greatest artistry is in the witnessing accommodation of Loves effort to reveal the poetry of the human soul that seeks to sing upon the sympathetic string; the resonant response vibrating to its greater likeness.

So, we go about our business here. We shape the world to our ends, almost. But we are shaped without understanding it every step of the way. Whether we have massed armies against presumed enemies; whether we are swept away on a sunny holiday beach, whether we work in the quiet of our being for the greater good, or proclaim our magnanimous acts in the crowded thoroughfares, we cannot fail to come to the same moment of revelation. It is true that some paths are more painful than others. Some paths work at a greater resistance to the inevitable. They run wide of the mark. They press apart. They press against. They push. And they harvest. On the road to Damascus or Samara, they press on and they kick against the pricks. It is the most amazing thing. It has been said so many times, in so many tongues, in so many lands and yet, it remains unheard.

Sunday, December 26, 2004

Across the Panavision screen of every yearning teenage boy’s life more than one beautiful girl will walk away un-approached into the distance. Into manhood and whatever pathetic after effects may follow, many a jaw-dropping woman will follow in their path, while the suitor remains mute, or distinguishes himself in a clown confusion of badly timed or alcoholically fueled embarrassments. Surely girls and women experience the same; of course, inspired Lochinvar’s and their female counterparts reel in the romantic swag in effortless fashion with nary a hitch in their stride.

There are many advantages that assist in the courtship; good looks, money, prowess of one sort or another. This is the world of visual worth. Sometimes it is real and sometimes it is crafted or assumed.

It’s an interesting fact that there are also singular souls who lack these assets and yet do as well or better than those superficially endowed. It’s the truth that most of the walking billboards and posturing icons aren’t worth the having except as articles of experience in the rite of passage; but that’s not germane to this polemic. It’s about getting what you believe to be unattainable.

You feel unworthy and insecure; failure is already developing as a predictable result. Lacking a sense of self and confident persona, the individual turns toward artifice and pretense to get to the goal. He begins to manufacture a self that will ‘seem’ worthy. Most every one of the defects in our character comes about through the need to impress other people with our importance. Many of the grievous injuries of life are perpetrated by the imposters we became.

It is amazing how often the confidence of real passion will gain the desired result. The ardor of the poet is a magic wand. It speaks to the soul of another and commands the positive response. I know this to be true. I’ve seen money and looks go wanting many a time in combat for the real thing. It’s to be assumed that vampires of both sexes have their allure but I’ve never been much entertained by them.

But this isn’t about getting laid or attaining some temporary orgasm that simulates a surrender you find yourself incapable of under ordinary circumstances. (Despite the defense mechanisms attendant, vulnerability is a highly desired item, whether you think you want it or not.) No, this is about having ultimate sex and bypassing the obstacles that you put in the way of it. Every sensory experience has it’s counterpart in an area of yourself where you no longer experience it. When you were a child it happened all the time. You had conversations you don’t remember and playmates you have long forgotten. They haven’t gone anywhere; when the magnetism turned outward into physical attractions of a sexual nature they were no longer visible.

Mystics have often compared encounters with the divine in romantic terms. It has been said that communion with God brings an ecstasy that mundane sexual congress cannot approach. Having experienced some degree of this I can say this is accurate. I can only guess at how far it can go. I’m pursuing the matter so I should hope I will find out.

Just as your lack of confidence in yourself kept you from talking to that beautiful girl or boy when you were young and man or woman when you were older; the same insecurity affects your relationship with the divine. It is certain that a lack of faith attends this; whether it be with yourself or with the divine. Essentially you are God but your perception of yourself goes lacking in terms of that which you don’t understand in the first place.

I’m not suggesting that these people who are beautiful in appearance are worth knowing to begin with; not if you consider their appearance as an indication of what lies within. And our idea of beauty changes as our capacity to see increases. I am suggesting that no one is more attractive than you are when you see yourself aright. God is not what your picture God to be, it is your wrong picturing that causes you to reject your image of God. God is playmate, lover and friend. Seen in this context God is humanized. You need to humanize God, at least as far as your relationship goes, if you want the relationship to be effective in any reciprocal way.

Telepathic invasion as a child is the chief difficulty most of us need to overcome. We got told lies by our parents, elders and environment. To believe a lie is to enslave yourself to an untruth. Daily you are lied to and in each case the intention is to diminish your self-worth. The whole industry of the world is fueled by applied guilt. This is what makes alcohol the legal fix. Nothing fuels guilt like alcohol. Judeo-Christian guilt turns the wheels of industry. When you can be made to hate yourself you can be made to buy in to the collective suffering you see all about you.

You have a right to consort with angels. You have a right to call God your friend; your lover. The situation you have put yourself in by buying into a lie has caused you to fraternize with the lower realms; to seek advice there. Their intentions are not you liberation. A purpose is served by these entities but it is not the function of wise avuncular guidance.

“It’s no use.” “I’m not good enough.” I’m not strong enough.” “It’s too much for me.” “I don’t want to stand out.” “If I make myself like everyone else my mask will protect me.” Uh, no... and it isn’t protecting ‘them’ either. It’s not pleasant having people point to you and say you’re crazy. No one enjoys being pecked to death by the chickens in the yard due to an unusual coloration. But you make a grave mistake by assuming that reaching for the highest means going without protection. It is only then when real protection becomes evident; regardless of the changes you have to go through on the way.

You can be all that you can be without joining the Army. The force of truth is akin to a light in the darkness. Shadows automatically withdraw. Self control and a correct direction masters environment. A correct sense of your place in the mix makes your position inviolate. Even my blind groping and regular mistakes have given me a measure of freedom that is largely unknown. I haven’t accomplished any of this under my own power. What I have done is sought to cooperate with the timeless directive. Inasmuch as I have been able to do this I have progressed.

Lying in my bed, sitting in the sunlight; at random times and remembering as I am able, I repeat, “I love you.”, over and over... Truly I mean it as well. I keep reaching; lack of balance and my own wrong impressions continually knock me back- but I persist. Consider this; there really isn’t anything else worth shooting for. It all crumbles to nothing. Having friends on the other side (I say ‘other side’ but it’s actually all here) ‘now’ means having friends on the other side when you actually do undress and reappear elsewhere. Better that you make those friends and lovers now.

Many secular and blind-eyed minds; many clever foxes and barking dogs will dispute all that I have to say here. I must ask, “Where is it that they lead you?” “To what end do they inspire?” Does Rupert Murdoch or any of the media and world leaders, entertainers and writers, psychologists, doctors or what have you, possess a schematic for your passage onward? Just what do they address in their words and actions? Faith is a currency. Love is a vehicle and a medium. It would be good to have something in your pocket and something to drive when you get wherever it is you are headed. You can’t put off the inevitable; all you achieve is a state of ongoing un-preparedness. Within this very moment you can call vast forces of good to your side. It’s understood you will have to appear to walk on your own more than you might like but at least you know where you’re headed and you won't actually be walking alone.

Friday, December 24, 2004

“tis a consummation devoutly to be wished” Obviously things can move faster or more slowly. If you think of The Pub as a metaphor you might ask yourself how much time you spend there. Part of the problem is that people don’t realize they live in more than one world at the same time; worlds overlap, interpenetrate; as one’s focus is often determined by the degree of one’s susceptibility to magnetism at a given point. We suffer in more than one place as well. The anguish of the body, the emotions and the mind are all well known to us by varying degrees. Pain should make you push on. It should create inquiry into the nature of distress.

For those of us who seek spiritual realization we find occasion, often in some cases, to ask, “Why is God picking on me?” Actually, you asked him to. If you’re pushing onward; inward, no doubt you are being pushed as well.

We have heard the terms; ‘ego’, ‘id’, ‘libido’, ‘personality’, ‘super ego’, ‘the intellect and sundry. Maybe we have some idea of these terms. My take is that we often confuse them and if we do have an idea of what they are it is usually the definitions given us by those who least understand them. There is a tendency in this phenomenal world to take seriously the points of view and assumed wisdom of doctors, lawyers, psychologists, religious leaders, philosophers and whatever environmental dominants there may be. The truth is that most of these people know very little about what’s what. If they did know what was what they wouldn’t be so ineffective and mystified in their treatment of whoever is unlucky enough to come into their sphere of influence.

We look to our political leaders to guide the ship of state and look out for our interests. At the same time we know that anyone is more likely to advance the interests of their friends as opposed to the interest of strangers. We live in a quid pro quo world. Of course this leads to the jockeying for favors and influences; the intrigues of court and the manipulation of laws that were designed to counter manipulation. We even see the construction of laws designed to control the direction of benefit. Well, uh... duh.

Who among us is righteous? And how many actually seek it in any case? Righteousness is not often an advantageous position for gain; of course we have self-righteousness. We got lots of that. We got hypocrisy and the gamut of mind-sets that facilitate the advance of self-interest. Would you be surprised to know that all of the bonhomie and looks of concern are orchestrated to the advantage of the player? Would you be surprised to know that all of the big players are full well aware of this feature in each other and for them it’s just a game? The deck is stacked against the ones who want to do the right thing. At the same time, most of them don’t even know what that is. We hear about patriotism and self sacrifice and the lot. How often are these mere vehicles once again for self interest?

Hardly anyone among us can look critically and honestly at ourselves and fail to see how much we are motivated by self interest. We all want to be thought a good fellow, smart, talented, interesting, attractive and sexy. Generally this comes at the expense of someone else. We’re in a room full of funhouse mirrors, a room full of people talking to themselves and posing for effect. To be uniquely and truly genuine is a fine art. How are we supposed to get there?

Our personality could be looked at like a house. It contains residents. It contains all of the other things I mentioned in connection with it previously. Maybe contains isn’t the best word. Let’s look at it as a vehicle through which these others facilitate themselves. Let’s think of the house as being composed of stained glass; the different colors being the different qualities and locations of our character. A single light shines through it but is colored differently at certain times and in certain places. This house is not transparent in every location. Some points are opaque and little light comes through. What the Hell, call it a blind spot. There’s only one central ego in all of us. So where does the appearance of difference come from? Our assumed personal ego, our sense of ourselves apart from others is a light blocker; it stands in the way of the central ego. You see people getting in their own way all the time. You see quite a few clumsy dancers. The intellect tries to understand what’s going on but it generally works on the behalf of the blocking self. I don’t think I need to address the libido. I could explain what its real job is;

Think of the libido as a power station. If there really is only one useful purpose to which is can be applied you can get an idea of the waste; cue the theme from the Five Foolish Virgins. And what the Hell is this, the id? Is that anything like your identification? Your ID card please... Well, I’m confused. I guess anyone would be with all these things cluttering up the place.

One can hothouse their evolution. But be forewarned that this isn’t the comfortable route. At least I haven’t found it to be so. Here’s where Love comes in. Love can be thought of as a universal solvent. Remember those dark spots on the glass? Think of Love as Windex. Love will dissolve the film and neutralize the dust. This hurts of course when the thing you are rubbing away has been identified as an important part of yourself. What happens when everything you thought you were; when everything you have used to identify yourself with, is washed away; pretty scary huh? Well, you’re not going to wash away the central ego.

There is that in us that is powering everything we do and attempting to live its life through us. We interfere. We get in the way. We argue. We fight like demons... interesting term. We fight even when we don’t want to fight because at some point we took in a lot of house guests who really should be on their way but don’t want to go.

Orchids are interesting. There are thousands of them. Did you know that the Vanilla bean is an orchid? We’re like orchids.

When you read the works of most western philosophers it is interesting the degree to which many of them have gone to prove a point while avoiding the truth. They can be awfully convincing if you want to take the time, and if you have the intelligence, to dissect what they’re saying. When you read the works of religious writers it is interesting to note the degree they go to in justifying their particular religion as the be all and end all. When you talk to doctors and psychologists it is interesting to see how they have formed a view of their subject based upon what they’ve been taught within the parameters of a particular view of the science. Most lawyers survive by convincing you that other lawyers are wrong.

Sometimes I think that all these people who quote all these philosophers and memorize the works of composers and who school themselves in all the apparent differences between all of the different representatives of the group; all those people who train themselves in wines and all the arcane arts of phenomenological diversity are just looking for ways to appear wise, attractive, mysterious, while on their way to getting laid. The certain fact that they are not wise is proven in the fact that they think any of this is important. It isn’t. I’d certainly not want to have been Wittgenstein or Schopenhauer or his wigged out disciple. I don’t drink tea with my little finger extended and I often mistake the works of composers for each other; when I have any idea at all.

What a sad destiny to have lived your life so that you can be dissected by phonies, who didn’t understand you in the first place, at a party full of poseurs? Try telling these people the truth. (Grin)

You are already everything you ever wanted to be. The problem is that you are still trying to be who you are. This is further complicated by the fact that what you are -is- and what you are not is not. It would be a real mess if it weren’t for the reality of what is working behind the scenes to put you into the state of perfect remembrance. You’re not here for this foolish struggle, you’re here to live. Try it out.

If a person would focus entirely upon their thought, their speech and actions- full time- something marvelous will occur. This is all you need to know about Yoga, Philosophy, Medicine or Rock and Roll. This brings about the ‘hot-housing’ effect. This tells the engineer that you’re going along with the program. This signals that you are going to put aside pretension and bullshit and allow reduction to take place. You accept diminishment. You agree to die in order that you might live forever. You won’t have to primp in the mirror any more. You won’t have to be anybody important. You won’t have to feel anxious and insecure about the fact that you don’t know what’s going on. In fact, that will make it exciting; and let’s face it- you don’t know what’s going on do you? As soon as you start doing this you will see how difficult it appears to be and ‘what’ you seem to be up against. Hold that thought...

A wonderful Christmas to you all and the sincere hope that you recognize the actual location of the manger and thereby allow the birth to take place; now that’s what I call ‘right to life’.

Thursday, December 23, 2004

I used to be an American. That’s what I say now. It was very difficult before. People would ask me where I was from. I tried saying I was a New Zealander but that’s a lie. Often I started out with an apology first, not wanting any association with the policies of America. And I’m not an American, not really. I don’t tear up or feel my chest swell at the Star Spangled Banner. The bad writing annoys me. I don’t like parades and I’d prefer tying a yellow ribbon around Tony Orlando’s dick to tying one around a tree who wasn’t asked for the privilege.

I don’t like the Fourth of July which seems to be a celebration of the Alcoholic Nation. Honestly, I don’t feel anything so why should I pretend. When I exercised my First Amendment rights I was thrown into prison; albeit under the guise of another offense- but since the offense was entirely manufactured I suspect we must go with the fact that I was too outspoken, for that is what drew the heat. Running afoul of Scientology didn’t help matters; once again I opened my mouth. And the second time they wanted to put me away for life it was again about the things I was saying.

I don’t like strip malls or suburban sprawl. I’m not after the so-called ‘good life’. I’m bored to tears by the Judeo-Christian ethic which really comes down to who you know, who you blow or a propensity to fuck the other guy over. The dreary hymns of a tedious luddite religion make me want to take all my clothes off and declare along with William Blake that I have regained the pristine innocence of my youth. Are you washed in the blood? You bet I am.

Sexuality is the engine room of Love’s evolution and it’s been a great climb. But I don’t recognize these new staircases. I’m also not blind or dead to the wonder of all the curving opulence of my reflection everywhere around. This doesn’t mean I want it leering at me with product in hand, on the hood of a car or glistening with beads of condensation upon gleaning asses and cocktail glasses. I’m not fond of makeup applied with a trowel; it’s an ugly sight to see mascara colored tears turning a woman into a raccoon emerging from a coal mine... and that seems to be a very American Kodak moment exported round the world. Sure, no doubt the ancient East had its contribution of painted faces and bound feet but it’s as American as the ingredients in supermarket apple pie with chemical names longer than even the Germans ever imagined.

I hate the taste of perfume heavier than air filtering into my mouth as a scent laden bag of bad opportunities glides past me on the sidewalk, rubbed down with body lotions and deodorants and what all. No doubt deodorant is a necessity for the stink of the corruptions of these prisoners of bad appetites.

The whole nation is awash in awful smells; the exploding hog lagoons of pork processing through bodies morphing into the like. I close my eyes and seagulls cannot fly from the weight of garbage bags wrapped about their feet. It’s a world of rats after dark. Millions of hungry red eyes gleam in the darkness of the alleys that house the ones who didn’t make the cut. Under the glamour and the feel good hallucinations of the pharmaceuticals is a rank decaying mass. I’m not part of that. I can’t just close my eyes to the turd laced toilet seats in Grand Central as thousands of suits go past on their way to a safe bathroom. When I tipped the Rasta-junkie with the mop it was more for the show than anything else.

I don’t support the troops. The dead Iraqi and Palestinian peoples are not highway scenery to me. I support the collective urge of these peoples to drive the invader from their lands. When bits of Halliburton contractors fly through the air, when suicide bombers are driven to give their life with the only means possible against far superior forces I understand. I don’t buy the hype. I know there’s no Al Qaeda, not in any sense as it is understood to exist. I know there’s no Bin Laden except as a poster child for fascist intent.

The amusement park gives me a headache. I’d machine-gun Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck but they don’t exist and neither does the American Dream that wallows in the bowels of a nation with half-digested Big Mac’s, Big Gulps, McFucking Fries and shits through the ass of a billion neurotic chickens on their way to a Kentucky Fried funeral. I can’t bottom-line the mind set that turns cows into cannibals. I’d be mad too.

I don’t want my water filtered through seven other kidneys before it gets to me. I can’t handle the jackhammer brain rape of Hip Hop, Rap or the treacle-laden songwriting of Clear Channel hypno-massage... remain calm, “row, row, row your boat...” Hey! What happened to all the terror alerts? I’m not sanguine about sexual alternatives manufactured by a yinned out lifestyle. Is that what it’s all about? An entire people bent over the rail in anticipation of recreational ass-fucking? When the whole country is a single mall, every customer is a woman.

I don’t want a drunken, psychopathic ex-football cheerleader for president. Yet as dangerous as this clown may be, the forces of political correctness raise a specter of fascism worse than anything he can come up with. The control of perspective, thought and speech is chilling. Let me go on record to state that I have zero respect for any and all cloying little obscenities of wounded sensitivities. I’m not heartbroken if some suburban witch is offended by a Halloween party. I don’t even like Halloween. I don’t care if Pagans, Christians, Gays, transgendered carnival freaks, plastic surgery addicts, over eaters, under eaters, manic depressives or kids with freckles get respect or nurturing on their way to ever more absurd destinations of fantasy. I don’t want to be around it. I don’t want to know about it and I don’t want to watch when they get caught in the headlights of reality.

It made me aggressive is what it did. I got prone to back kicking shopping carts that people with no control thought it was okay to run into me with. I can’t ask the whole world to step outside. I don’t want to be angry, disappointed or sad. And there really aren’t many other choices in the bedlam of a country turned into a shake and bake matter maker.

I expect the New Jerusalem to rise from the ashes. I am convinced that life has a grand purpose. I know there is a master plan. I do not value American lives above Iraqi lives. I do not honor Christians more than Muslims. I have no family. You are my family. But you have lost your way. You have no vision. And “where there is no vision the people perish.” My heart goes out to you. Yet I know that if I went among you and spoke the truth you would tear me to pieces. I could handle that if it served a purpose. It would not. I don’t want to work within the system because the game is rigged. Until you can find your voice and articulate a collective outrage you are doomed. There is no bright rainbow on this path you walk. You are unhappy; you are seething in your impotence. You know it is wrong and yet you go on, trapped within your idea that this is the way it was meant to be. Au contraire, this is not the way it was meant to be. It does not have to be this way. Was I ever an American? I wonder.

I’ve written letters to a number of you but received no replies. I wonder if you are getting them. Let me know. I’ll close with a poem I wrote on the fiftieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor when many in congress were calling on the Japanese to apologize. I think it says what I think about this great American experiment.

Should the Japanese Apologize forPearl Harbor?(written on the 50th anniversary of the event)the Japanese were not the first to bomb Pearl Harborwe wereso i think the Japanese should apologize for Pearl Harborjust as soon as we apologize to the Hawaiiansfor bringing the mosquito and yellow feverkilling thousandsfor bringing venereal diseasefor the horror of sugar caneand purple mountains travestiesabove the looted plainsfor sabotaging the beaches with kiawe thorn treesto force the natives to drape their bodiesfrom the hot gazeof their twistedgodamnedchristian missionary eyes

i think Japan should apologize for Pearl Harborjust as soon as America apologizes to the Japanese Americansfor interning them in concentration campsand as soon as Richard Nixon’s Quakers apologizefor stealing their properties(which were left to them in trust to be returned upon their releasewhich they were not)

I think Japan should apologize for Pearl Harborjust as soon as we apologize for Hiroshima and Nagasaki(still simulated every year at a Texas airfield)i will always remember how the blast fused their shadowsinto the building wallsTHEY DIDN'T GET ANY WARNING EITHER

i think Japan should apologize for Pearl Harborjust as soon as we apologize to the Native Americansfor the ruin of their culturethe theft of their landsthe whiskey and infected blanketsthe destruction of their hunting groundsand for stripping them of all humanity and dignityTHEY DIDN'T GET ANY WARNING EITHER

i think the Japanese should apologize for Pearl Harborjust as soon as America apologizesto the African Americansfor slaverybeatingsemasculationsrapeshobblings and brandingspretended emancipationssegregationlynchingsandthe slanderingimprisonmentand murder of their heros

i think Japan should apologize for Pearl Harborjust as soon as Americaapologizes to Cambodiafor 3640 B-52 bombing raidsand 110,000 bombs droppedduring a war that never took placeand for backing Pol Potas the legitimate representative of the people(i remember to this daythe pyramid mountain of skulls outside Pnom Phen)THEY DIDN'T GET ANY WARNING EITHER

i think Japan should apologize for Pearl Harboras soon as Attila appologizes to RomeSalome apologizes to John the Baptiston the day that politicians become honestbankers become generousno fault applies to loveand the Pope shits in the woodsand should be delivered to the White Houseby a woman on ice skatesten minutes after Hell freezes over

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

We’ve all heard that phrase in response to the query, “are you threatening me?”; “that’s not a threat, it’s a promise.” in regard to stepping over the line with someone. We live in a world of threats and promises. We often miss them. There are threats to others and threats to our selves and they come from others and they come from our selves. We know people who are their own worst enemies; I’m one of them.

There are promises, whether you think of the rainbow set in the sky, or the promise of a new tomorrow; the promise we show in our efforts, or the promise of reward from our efforts. Clumsy people are a threat; they can get you killed if you are forced to rely on them. We lack vision often enough. I don’t need to give you any evidence of that; or do I?

Every challenge presents difficulties in the face of accomplishment. A promise pushes us and we would hope that certain threats warn us. How certain is any promise? Some things are more immediately evident than others and some things stretch across wide distances of time and terrain.

I often ask myself, “What are these people doing?” when I walk through crowded areas. The news is filled each day with catastrophic events; great losses and massive reaping. One thing we know on the surface is that most of it doesn’t seem fair. Big dogs roam at will.

You can look at where you stand today and think it may continue forever. Donald Trump, no doubt looks toward an ever brighter future and the promise of new developments in hair technology. I know I mention Trump a lot. To me Trump symbolizes a certain excess of hubris and personal blindness that makes him stand out among his kind. I think the same when I consider Geraldo Rivera among journalists, g.w. bush among world leaders, Madonna among entertainers and, good grief, I could really spend some time here; let’s not.

I list those people because they represent those who have achieved great success with zero justification and ability. Trump may be an exception here. I suspect he has some talent in making money. Sad as these people may be, even sadder are the legions that would be like them if they could. The degree to which people will go to embarrass themselves in front of the entire world is amazing, more amazing are the crowds that follow them. These are some examples of the human equivalent of a can of Coca Cola; the world dances in the background of the commercial. “Look, that’s me, third from the left, bottom row.” Where are they going?

It is sad but it is verifiably true; people treat that which is most valuable as worthless and pursue what is worthless as if it were of great value. I can say this, circumstances prove it, but generally no one believes it. Hmmm.

I’ve got some English language TV now; the BBC lineup. I haven’t watched much TV in five years and, other than movies and sporting events, I haven’t watched much TV in 20 years. I can hardly watch it now, but I do. I’m looking for something but it’s not there. I can’t believe it’s not there. It has to be there. Why else would people watch it? They watch it to diminish their awareness of the threat within and without and to evade the promise of what looks like hard work. Diminishing your awareness of a threat is suicidal; whistling past a graveyard where the inhabitants are not dead. Evading the promise of true fulfillment is another puzzle. Is it the lure of the crowd?

Where I used to post are a number of people who think they are entertaining when they post inane questions in hope of a large response. They point to the response as evidence of relevance. Some of them make significant the mundane elements of their life as if there were some arcane mystery therein; “Why am I tired?”, “Who is your favorite pop star?”, “what are you buying for Christmas?”, or they launch endless attacks on each other. You go into a bar and see the people sitting there. You come back twenty years later and the same people (minus a few by way of attrition) are still sitting there having the same conversation. Call it progress.

You are on the move toward something and I don’t mean just your demise. If all that ever happened was that you lived and died this once, maybe it wouldn’t matter. Of course, you would expect that Spring would only come once, that history would not repeat, that Mozart couldn’t possibly exist, that the Earth would only turn once, that irony would be meaningless and then all the evidence to the contrary wouldn’t be there in plain sight. I’m not affected by other people’s unwillingness to believe; except perhaps that they don’t believe in me and even then; I do.

You’re all headed somewhere. Either you’re headed toward a personal destination or you are in the hope of following someone, whether that is Trump, or Buddha, Microsoft or Clarabelle the Clown. And all of these people have a specific and certain destiny. One and one is two. Kansas City is in Kansas City. Old couches go to the dump. Broken bodies go into the grave. Will Trump be rich forever? No. So, do you want it for just a little while? What’s on the other end of the polarity? Massive poverty is on the other end of the polarity. If you are swinging between the poles you are guaranteed the interchange of extremes.

Why is it that when you get what you want you don’t want it? Why is it that the more tightly you grip something, the more it pours like sand from between your fingers? We see the classic examples of recurring unhappiness everywhere and yet we stupidly ignore the obvious. The anger loose in this holiday season; in the stores, on the highways, in the homes... it’s... heh heh...ah people...

There are certain guarantees you can count on, barring scheduling difficulties and unexpected heart attacks. If you are headed to Kansas City, you’ll get there. If you are headed to prison, you’ll get there. If you’re following someone who is headed somewhere, you’ll wind up there with them. There’s a location for everything. That’s a promise. But it may be a threat.

As usual I am talking around something hoping it shows up on its own. I can’t directly say something without creating a host of questions.

I often wonder why people don’t ask themselves, “Why am I doing this?” “Where am I going?” Maybe they just have to find out. Of course they are going to find out. But why do they have to keep finding out the same thing over and over? Is it going to be different next time?

Where you are headed is where you wind up. Madonna is going to wake up at 180 pounds looking like a basset hound putting on her makeup on the Staten Island Ferry every morning for the next ten thousand years on her way to work at Murphy’s Discount Shoe Wear. Trump is going to be shaking an empty McDonald’s coffee cup on the Bowery for the next who knows how long. Geraldo may well be an outhouse fly 5000 times in a row. Rupert Murdoch? Don’t ask.

You are guaranteed certain things. You are promised them. You only have to set forth and you will get there. Don’t make it a pole facing another pole across a wide expanse. Don’t be a ping pong ball. I know about a place filled with every delight you can imagine. You only have to convince the man at the door to let you in. You can go other places. You can trade immortality for a seat at the table with these other folk but you’re not going to like it. And that’s not a threat, that’s a promise.

Yes, this piece may have been insufficient to the task at hand but one must remember I'm not an empiricist, I'm a metaphysician. You have to fill in the blanks. Think of yourself as being engaged in Neo-Existential Psycotherapy. Try to remember that the solipstic think is true only as far as it goes.

Monday, December 20, 2004

The phenomenon of the inner and the outer world and the interplay between is the greatest mystery of human experience. Essentially it is the simplest thing but out of it comes incomprehensible complexity. One might say that on one end is the unknowable origin of the undivided self and on the other end, oh man; everything else. Surrender on the one end leads to the fountain of overwhelming joy; Heaven if you will. Surrender on the other end leads to all the permutations of what we call Hell.

Every human life is God in miniature. Those who dispute the existence of God do so because of their own failure to live up to the promise. They are those who look outward for answers. They’ve turned it all upside down and they wonder why it looks wrong. One might ask who they think is looking through their eyes? One might also ask whom it is they see when they look into the eyes of another.

The thing itself; that which we are formed out of, that which everything is formed out of is the body of God. Call it Super-consciousness for the moment. It’s the thing entire, a circle complete. The action that moves ‘from’ it is a spiral. We are a divided relationship within the one. We are Self-consciousness and Sub-consciousness. And everything in our life comes out of the interplay between them. What we tell ourselves; what we convince ourselves of is what comes to be. We lie to ourselves and then complain and wring our hands when the lie comes true. Well, we were lied to and we believed it. As children we were telepathically invaded by our parents and the world. Many of our earliest interpretations of experience were implanted into us. And we brought bags and in some cases, container loads along with us from before.

How did it get like that? At what early point did the concept of Evil come into being? You have the story of the Garden of Eden for reference. You have the serpent that you call the Devil. Yet the serpent is God. What a mystery... If we look at the thing objectively it is a story. If we look at it subjectively it hurts.

It should be clear that we are God’s in training. This is the meaning of the angels that were meant to serve us. How instead did we come into the bondage of devils? We were born as kings and queens and yet we were driven from our thrones while those designed to serve us overrun the castle, drink our wine, eat our food and laugh at the ignorance that has blinded us to the beauty of ourselves.

The very process that God used to form the worlds, to divide the light from the darkness, is present within us. We can go two ways with it. We can take our advice from two places. The superior and inferior kingdoms; or we might say the divine and the infernal have but one overlord. It’s all about relationships. A good example might be whether you see the queen of Heaven or a piece of ass when you look at a woman. What is it you think you want? And when you get what you want, who should you be pissed off at? Someone said a long time ago that “the proper study of mankind is man”... Nosce te ipsum... know thyself.

It’s good to know that every condition is temporary, even though it may endure a long time. How do you think the world could have been devised otherwise? Isn’t the most wonderful thing about life the reality of choice? The real meaning of ‘free will’ is not in the way most understand it. Our American culture is a good example of how the idea of freedom can be engineered to create slavery. Free will really means that you have the right to obey or defy. Consider the tale of Lucifer. But there are mysteries hidden here and words are not the Hierophant for this, certainly not my words.

The world is meant to leave ashes in your mouth. Everything that appears for your pleasure is designed to disappoint. So therefore, all of the miseries of this realm are here to point you in another direction. And when you go looking, looking elsewhere, yet more misery awaits. Still looking outward you encounter the trappings of religion, or the convolutions of philosophy. And you will still seek to form it all to your desired state. You will play God no matter what. The thing is though, that only god can play God with any hope of effective result. So it would stand that the only way to do it is to become it. One could think of The Prodigal Son at this time.

All the bad acts upon the stage are the result of the human mind working out of ignorance to satisfy appetite. It’s all hunger. Hunger is a fire and it will burn until there is no longer any fuel. It would seem that the wiser course would be to treat with your hunger like a gas flame... adjusting... tweaking... a blue white flame... warming... enduring.

“Yeah but,” “Yeah but,” “Well then, how come...?” How about shut up? I’ve heard all the arguments. The thing is; what do you want, a lie? ...or the truth? If you wanted the truth you would find it but the truth is not convenient to the demands of appetite. Your mind is a garden and you have cleverly planted weeds among the flowers. One has to patiently weed. Weeding is achieved by casting out thought. What is real is not affected by this. It will remain. At a certain point enough emptiness has occurred to allow for instruction. You can’t put anything into a bucket that is already full.

Now, I’m not here to say who or what is wrong. I don’t know that. In any case I could not know how it was for you. It is possible to control the entire world from right inside yourself. Everything you see and hear, the way you interpret it, defines the world you move in. If something hurts, you got something wrong. At the heart of it all is selfish intention (you like that haven?). But what if I give up, what if I let go and nothing catches me? (Grin) well now, I guess you’ll have to find out won’t you.

You really think you’re just a meat puppet trapped in a world of random event? Do you think it’s just some blind evolution toward... what? Few people consider that both evolution and the totality of God may both be true, though neither of them is entirely what has been stated. Intelligence is not the result, it’s the origin.

You could well ask at this point, “If that’s the case Les, how come you wrote that recent post?” Did you really read that post? And can you ever know what might have been in my mind when I wrote it? Behind everything you think you know (or ‘beyond’ if you prefer) lies something else... and beyond that ...and beyond that ...and beyond that.

On the day that you decide to be sincere; on the day that you can honestly say, “I don’t know.” in the moment that you are willing to risk everything you don’t have anyway, for the possibility of realization, the process will start. It’s been ongoing but along the lines of a treadmill gradient. In the Bhagavad-Gita it says, “Success is speedy for the energetic.” It all comes down to how much grief you can stand before you admit you have been going the wrong way. One has to be fundamentally honest with themselves. Otherwise you are still planting weeds and watering them with your tears. You sub-consciousness faithfully reproduces everything you tell it to. Don’t tell me you didn’t order this. There’s your address right on the shipping label. The same can be true of half efforts. You work at the right thing for a couple of weeks, don’t get your ‘over the weekend enlightenment’ results and so you abandon the work. It’s as if you moved. A few weeks later a package shows up at your door but you are somewhere else.

Well, we wouldn’t have so much great art had it not been wrung from anguished hearts. We wouldn’t have all the movies and the plays and those great novels. Yes, you’re a fool, I’m a fool, but that’s okay. You can tell the right direction by the amount of people laughing at it. You can also tell by the emptiness of the highway, road, path etc.

We see but we don’t see. We hear but we don’t hear. We know better but we do it anyway. We eat and eat to fill the empty space. We long and long, we cry, we scream, we fight. If we took all that energy and put it to the right pursuit, angels would fly to our side, doors would open, things would change and you might find “eternity in an hour.”

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Portugal is beautiful, the landscape, the people... beautiful. I haven’t been anywhere in Europe (or anywhere else, except in my head that was) this nice. I knew it would be a nice place because you never hear much about it. Places that you hear a lot about usually suck; they’re full of pushing crowds and blind-eyed people hungering for a fix. Portugal is filled with painters light. Maybe it’s the air; it’s so clear, vivid; you can really see things, everything stands out in stark relief.

I came here because my dear friend ‘auracatblue’; what she called herself when she used to post at that entropic cyber-swamp, The Fray, told me about it and described it so wonderfully that I had to see it. She described it beautifully, just as it is. We’re born on the same day of the year. I don’t know if that means anything. It might mean we tend to see things in a similar fashion. I know that we do see things in a similar fashion, inasmuch as I know up to this point. She had considered coming to visit with me here this winter but circumstance came betwixt.

Today I was sitting on the deck at the sunny side of the villa and a herd of sheep came up the hill to my left. I’d not seen any sheep here since I arrived. The lapdogs of my loved ones broke into the frenzied yipping that serves to make small dogs less preferable to me than large ones. I walked out of the driveway and watched them. Forward they came. There’s a nice area of lush green clover like grass growing near to where I live. In the direction from which they had come there was less of it. They grazed for a short while until some portion of the herd began to move off in another direction and then all of the sheep followed after. They went off toward the rocks and dry scrub that could in no way be described as an improvement over where they had just been.

Seeing this put me in mind of present day America; bushligula is the herdsman of the moment, though he himself is without a clue as to whither he may go. He is herded himself like some ambitious traveler convinced he can find water in the desert, even though the desert itself is being milked of its moisture. bush is the public face of national greed. He is the formed gollum of Ayn Rand’s distorted ruminations. Greed is good.

What an irony it is that sheep will leave the lush feeding area to wander into the land of stones and bramble at the behest of a clown without compass or compassion. Will faith in all the wrong things lead the multitudes into the land of milk and honey? The milk and honey futures have already been shorted by the traders who convinced bush that fewer witnesses meant less interference and what better place for the would be witnesses than circumstances of extremity that would capture all of their attention; “Oh yeah, and don’t forget to shear them on their way out. They won’t be needing coats where they are going.”

If you take the trouble you can find more information than you can read on how yet another election was stolen. You have to look though because the usual sources are mute. The usual sources are part of the whole ganglia of control that work the sheep.

There’s only one problem with the whole charade and that is that there are a huge portion of life forms still moving on two legs who are not happy camping in a wilderness of stones. If some large portion of people has abdicated its humanity to become livestock, well, that’s history in facing mirrors; but what about the rest of you? What will you do and where will you go?

A rising demagogue on the neo-fascist Christian front is one Franklin Graham. He and those of the favored cadre are presently doing blackmail duty in Iraq. Well, Frankie-Boy himself isn’t there. Franklin and the rest of the Christian soldiers marching on to war have joined up with all interested parties to shut down, wipe out, burn to ash and otherwise eliminate the Muslim threat. You ain’t seen nothing yet folks.

Now, I can see pretty well what’s on the Event Horizon. I possess what I suppose must be a peculiar lens that doesn’t come stock. I’m suspecting it’s a custom job. I’m not quite sure how I came into possession of it. All I know is that I have it and you can’t get it at Crazy Bill’s Computer Warehouse. By virtue of this lens I knew there were no WMD’s right from the giddy-up. I cam right out and said it from day one and I posted about it every day in a day count up until Day 125 when I got tired of it. Along the way I was mocked and dismissed. I was asked whether I would apologize when they were found. I was asked what I would say when they were found. People offered to bet me certain sums of money. Well, as you can see...

And I’ve noted any number of other things along the way. I saw through the “Alqaeda Bombed the WTC” scam pretty quickly. I’ve seen through pretty much whatever they’ve shaped to put in front of the light in order to cast whatever shadow they have a mind to manipulate for the benefit of controlling your minds and influencing your actions. I know that the large evangelical religious movements have dick to do with Jesus. I know it’s just crowd control. I see it the way I see these words appearing in front of me. It’s clear. It’s crystal. You don’t see it? You do see it? Why’s that?

It may not matter how many tens of thousands die, except to them and only until they are dead. It could be that they all deserve what they get. It’s a bizarre possibility that God really does want to make the world safe for SUV’s and fat people’s rights to eat saturate fats until they explode. It’s possible that the people writing at Slate and MSNBC.com are more entertaining than I am; more truthful than I am. They’re getting paid a lot of money and I’m not getting paid any money so, wouldn’t that make them more truthful than me? Isn’t the amount you are paid and the measure of your wealth also the actual measure of your essential worth and veracity? So I am told... So I have been told.

I’m in the green clover and I can see the sheep down the hill among the stones and bramble. I’ve plenty of water and food and attractive shelter. I was at dinner last night with a very wealthy man who can buy anything he wants several times over and go anywhere he pleases. He’s a really decent sort too, or I wouldn’t have been having dinner with him. Yet I know he doesn’t live any better than I do, nor derive any greater pleasure from his life. I know that the sheep in the valley; the herdsman, the herdsman’s herdsmen- “Mrs. Brown you’ve got a lovely daughter...” I know they enjoy the thing entire far less than I.

So I am in Portugal, this heartbreakingly wonderful land. Earlier I sat in the sun and felt it wash me. With my eyes closed I could sense the citizens of the sun grouped about in their astral garments. They do visit me. And I dream sometimes of my walled garden in Southern France where they and others will visit me on a regular basis as I sit among the foliage and the chosen rocks of my private garden. I know what I want. Knowing what you want then eliminating the peripherals and non-essentials is the key to being there. Knowing where to find what you want is the key to knowing where to look. The sheep know what they want but they do not know where to look. The ones leading the sheep have sold their inheritance for a mess of potage. Am I responsible for shaking the sheep? Am I the defining obstacle to the blundering herdsmen? I have neither the power nor the mandate for such a thing.

It may be that what I have it a common thing, likely to be thrown aside and trampled by the rush into Wal-Mart; were I standing there with thing in hand I would likely be trampled too. I once asked my teacher, the man on the beach, why he wasn’t in the city where many people could profit from his wisdom. He said, “I don’t like being pushed around.” Do you like being pushed around?

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Greetings one and all; despite how small the audience may be, it’s nice to be able to say something like that. And it’s not as if I haven’t played to a few empty halls in my time; of course, when I say ‘my time’ I should be referring to ‘forever’, because that’s how long we have; whether we are aware of it at this time... or not.

I haven’t posted anything because I didn’t really feel like it. I’ve been here, wherever it is that I am and I could have written something but...

Well, I got a promotion recently. It’s been quite some time since that happened. It’s changed a lot of things. Maybe it hasn’t changed anything but it has changed the way I see things and so, one way or another, it has changed things. I had planned on deleting this blog and moving on to other venues. It was my intention to become more les visible; I picked that name for a particular reason.

Over the course of this recent incarnation/appearance here at Ground Zero, I have managed to avoid too much exposure or success; where that wasn’t sufficient I was able to screw it up; which is the same thing as far as results go. Anyway, you would think, after one has been here for long enough it would become fairly clear whether the fruits one had brought to the market were in enough demand to make vending them a vocation.

Now, I never thought of the things I do as being a Wal-Mart shelf item. I haven’t thought of presence as a motivation for celebrity. There is a difference between presenting something as a natural expression of ones being and the packaging and marketing of an item. Herein lays a real conundrum that many real artists run up against. It’s at this point where you hear phrases like; ‘selling out’, ‘making it’, ‘getting a foot in the door’ and ‘the casting couch’. There’s a point where ones productions gain some measure of success in The World; if ever. At that point one has to deal with a number of factors, some of them can be pleasant and some one them can be decidedly unpleasant.

My motivation has always been to find the secret heart; the hidden well-spring of life. It just so happens that I’ve also been encumbered with a creative nature in a world that celebrates crap. A very cursory and casual observation will provide ample proof of that. There are different perspectives on the value of what I do. In the main, my work has usually been well received; when it wasn’t intentionally shocking. There’s also a segment of the population that experiences great discomfort at what I do and any attention I may receive. I needn’t go into the reasons for this. I know what they are and that is comfort enough (grin).

If you were to think of the ineffable, indefinable, essential light that authors everything and you were to imagine it as a many, many faceted round gem, you wouldn’t be far wrong. We’ve got Up and Down, then we’ve got East and West and North and South, then we’ve got the subdivisions of that and, really... things can be broken down into more and more complicated shades of difference. When you think of the shades that light goes through in a day from Dawn to Dusk you can get an idea; so it is with the possible facets of this gem. If you think of Up and Down as two faces and the four directions as four faces... you get the picture?

So all those saints and Buddha’s and avatars and what have you are a facet and some of those facets (faces) contain many, many other faces within them (and then within them) all at a different place in the consciousness of that facet... and all of the facets dissolve behind the face into one thing. Every realized soul sits on the same well. Only the well counts and that is one thing that every realized soul upon the well realizes. Some faces are larger and more embracing than others; The One- impersonal behind the scenes, then Heaven and Earth or God as Mother or Father; much like your own conscious and subconscious minds. Of course, you as universe in microcosm contain everything that is found in the entire. It’s only realization that counts for anything. It’s realization that turns on the lights on the Christmas tree, even though sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.

End of digression; and perhaps the beginning of another? Some years ago I was living at The Guru Bawa Fellowship in Overbrook in Philadelphia. A fellow there, a real promotional type, heard my music and flipped over it; I’ll spare you the references he made. He went to Bawa and told him about me. At that time Bawa had been saying that “all this singing and dancing aren’t going to get you anywhere’ and he basically frowned on all of the variations of creative expression; I’m sure he had his reasons.

Well, Michael (the fellow lobbying Bawa about me), was persistent and so Bawa asked for me to come to him. We had a ‘spirited’ exchange. Meanwhile the TV was on in the room and one of those commercials that all seem to come out of Atlanta, GA. was on selling Sergio Franchi’s greatest hits. Heh... heh... Bawa looked at me and said, “Okay, you go and do this. You go and do this and then you come back.” In the succeeding days this caused a huge uproar as dozens of people went to him asking for permission to do it as well. Finally Bawa had to give a discourse about how a king in some country asked for all of the musicians to come and perform and it wound up a cacophony. It’s a Sufi story, I don’t want to have to type it all out; I’m sure you get the idea. Suffice it to say, no one got permission. This caused severe resentment toward me. I’m no stranger to this severe resentment. Bawa looked in his hand once, after finding out that I was a writer and then said, “Oh yes, I’ve read your books, all of them, you write and I will help you and you will write books of wisdom”. Of course he was talking about me working to translate certain of his ideas into children’s books and perhaps other guided efforts and I wasn’t into that at the time... more resentment; not from him of course. Bawa said a number of very nice things about me which I won’t repeat because of the ‘more resentment’ factor.

For whatever the reasons may be, I’ve had a remarkable life. It has also been a very painful progression. If I have some few small gifts it’s because I earned them. Most people don’t want to do the work. Most people are lazy or afraid. But whatever may have been remarkable about my life has also put me in conflict with ‘market forces’, ‘glitter’, ‘glamour’, lies and outright bullshit. In a world of lies, the truth is often found beaten, bloody and alone in the back alleys off the neon strip. Basically I’m not welcome. I can do this thing here- and I can do the other things that I do other places... there. People will come and go and I’ll go on doing what I do outside the periphery for however long I do it.

...but, like I said, I got a promotion; no need for me to define that. This promotion changes things. I have a real ability at being a firebrand and that’s out now; although I don’t understand my recent “Paris Hilton, poor little rich ho” rap tune in the context of this promotion- probably it’s just an echo of some sort and it will die out. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I fail to see the significance of my going on any further with all of the projects I have involved my life in. They have only brought me grief and more resentment; certainly there has been joy in the creation, but let’s face it, I’m way out on the margins and I can’t see where that is likely to change. I can’t imagine anything I will write as being an improvement upon so much of what has been available for centuries. I do not see where it matters whether anything I do gets heard at all. I’m not sure why I write this blog, or the books I have written and am writing. I don’t know why I go on writing songs and exposing myself to the conditions of this world as a performer when I could be entirely les visible and fully immersed in profoundly new and exciting things. I don’t think I’d miss anything; and no ...nothing happened- it’s just a growing perception of the terrain I have been traveling in an effort to express something that has already been expressed in thousands of beautiful ways, with less effort and more support and which endure to this moment for the edification and enjoyment of all. It may be that I did all of this just to find this out.

I’m not sure I get anything from any of this any more. I’m sure of very little, but what I am sure of, I am very sure of and I am sure that if I was supposed to be doing these things there wouldn’t be such incredible resistance to what I do. The doors would not be so firmly barred; the help and assistance would be greater. I have the benefit of many, many past incidents and examples which make (or should make) this very, very clear to me.

My feeling is that if Nature cries out for whatever it is I do; whatever barking dog, chirping bird or vibrating cricket I may be... then okay... there it is. But until such time as that occurs I think I can spend my time in better ways, I can certainly do as much and more, inwardly, as I have ever done outwardly.

It’s nice to hear the things that I hear, here and in other locations and other mediums- but all of this, save for the peculiar, personal touch I bring to it can be found elsewhere- and it will never be more important and permanent than when it is found within and recognized by yourself. So, there you are.

Promotions are not some sudden freedom from responsibility; they seem to actually bring more... and ones new duties can be hard to understand and quite difficult to perform initially; and, when they also involve complete attention to ones every word and thought; quite fatiguing as well.

Bawa’s not the only one to have said certain things to me... but I must have missed something, somewhere along the way... because it really does appear that I am tacking against the wind when I could be just sailing away. So...

If this particular facet just disappears then that’s just what it was supposed to be- it only got absorbed into something larger, or smaller, or however the physics applies. Thanks for all the cards and letters anyway.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

I imagine you have heard of Ripley’s “Believe it or Not”, possibly even the companion volume, “Stranger than Fiction”. Then there’s that line from Shakespeare about more things in heaven and Earth than Heraclites ever dreamed of in his speculations. Jesus, as The Christ, says at one point, “In my Fathers house are many mansions. If it were not true I would not have told you so.”

Those of you raised in the Christian religion are raised to worship Jesus as a thing apart. Even when you are told about having Jesus in your heart, it is always as if it were a force apart; something greater and cleaner than you will ever be. Oh sure, you can aspire to it but you can’t get there. However, Jesus said, “Call me not Master, for a servant does not know what a master is about. Rather call me ‘friend’”. He was good enough to also say, “Greater things than I have done you shall do, for I go now unto my father,”

It’s funny how you get different impressions of Jesus the Christ. It’s further amazing how people who purport to represent Christ can behave so badly; so very un-Christ-like. Certainly it requires a amazing amount of self-deception to be able to define G.W. Bush, Gerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and so many others as having even the remotest connection to the ‘real’ Jesus Christ. It does seem as if everything is turned upside down. Black is made to appear white, up is made to appear down, shit is served as caviar; but of course it is served warm. I suppose it’s not such an impossible feat to teach yourself to believe that it isn’t shit and that it does taste like caviar. After all, look at the people you’ve accepted as being representative of Christ. There’s no difference here.

“By their works ye shall know them.”

There are people walking around on this planet; they look like me and you and they’ve been here for centuries. There are people who can perform feats that are truly astounding. It’s nothing for them. There’s a clue in that last sentence. Perhaps you have heard about the need to be kind to the poor and unfortunate. Maybe you have heard the phrase about “treating with angels unaware” A great majority of us would be extremely surprised to find that the world that we live in is nothing like it appears to be. Dragons, vampires, werewolves... oh, they’re definitely around... you just don’t recognize them as such.

Many men dream about being in the company of beautiful women; dream about having their hands on them. Some men are able to achieve this with ease. This is not to say that they do so, just that it is abundantly and freely available. Often these men are not rich, or powerful, or even good looking. It’s a secret that hides in plain sight. Of course, beauty...hmmm what’s that? There are quite some secrets hiding in plain sight.

Real love, as abundant as it is in the universe, is in scarce supply in the usual human interactions and applications. Most people don’t even know what it is. Everyone has felt it at some point. And some feel it more than others. It seems as if we’d all like to be in Love and be surrounded by Love; be drunk on Love, but... it costs too much. You say otherwise but, in fact, if it did not ‘appear’ to cost too much you would be deeply in Love right now. There really isn’t anything like it and every effort, witting or no, is directed toward getting it.

If you’ve ever been in the presence of a spiritual master there are certain things that are common to all of them; to all of them who are genuine. They seem to get along with everyone in a way that none of the rest of us are able (or willing) to. And they seem to have no personal history. Sure they had a personal history but it’s not in their minds or on their lips. They’re here now, not there now.

One thing they no longer are; since becoming (or recognizing) a Master- is whatever they thought they were before. They woke up in a particular way and were finally able to step back, to take a back seat, so to speak. Strangely, this also served to put them front and center (in some cases) as well.

Most of these people are capable of doing all sorts of marvelous things. Yet they seldom choose to. You would hardly catch most of them combing their hair like Donald Trump; except in the very strange case of Krishnamurti. Mind you, there are a great many imposters out there. Some actually believe their own bullshit and some are hyperaware of what they are about.

Let’s say you wanted to get next to the secret fountain. We’ve all got a wellspring within. Finding the portal, saying the magic words, walking the lonesome mile- that’s where we fall short or lack the direction sheet. Well, there are portals aplenty. The martial arts can be a portal; the occult sciences, religion, sex, knowledge (Faust anyone?), Love, selfless effort, self inquiry, constant remembrance... All of these are a portal AND a blind. There are others as well. Love is the recommended way in some combination with another, or by itself. For, though you can do without any of the others, you can’t do without Love.

Now, it’s possible, if you knew what you were doing, to effect the necessary changes in a mere 90 days or thereabouts. We generally take longer than that and, in the mass estate, MUCH longer.

Isn’t it interesting that, inasmuch as wonders and miracles abound, inasmuch as magic is a living reality; let’s call it the practical application of Love into the manifest realm (when it’s on the positive end...) Isn’t it amazing that it’s not on TV? Why is so much of what is on TV so banal and humiliating to the human estate? Might that be its job? It’s the monkey in the mirror isn’t it? It’s the constant distracting of the mind away from self contemplation. Entertainment is an escape away from the one thing that is truly entertaining. We hear about the riddle, the enigma that is life. It can be known but it cannot be said. It can be indicated but it can’t be directly pointed at. It’s there but it isn’t there but... but...

The real question any sane person should have is; why does it hurt?

I wish with all of my heart that I could transfer what I feel directly into every waiting heart. This doesn’t mean I don’t hurt sometimes. But I am certain I hurt far, far less than most people. But I know why it hurts. If you know why it hurts you can stop the hurt. You know where the hurt is and what is hurting. You know what that ‘what’ is.

You might be surprised to know that your hurting is a very important part of the economy. The belief that you can die is an enormous cash cow; fear of death, fear of injury, fear of the truth and fear of anything are big money makers. I don’t suppose I have to address appetite do I? Fear and appetite; you will see ‘them’ addressed on TV. But when it comes to the truth and all the good things in God’s treasure chest; why are the proponents all wearing Donald Trumps hair? Why are they such terrific liars? ...such incomparable hypocrites? Isn’t the truth wonderful enough? Then why lie? Think about it... cui bono.

Hey, we’re not going to find out something new later on. It’s just like Mr. Ecclesiastics said a long time ago. What is profound and wonderful is not locked up in a safety deposit box in Switzerland. The most incredible wealth, power- you name it- if it’s fabulous- if it is truly valuable- it is locked up inside of you. Yeah, yeah, you heard it all before. Yeah, yeah, you know, YOU KNOW! I don’t know...ah yeah, there’s that riddle, that enigma again.

And you know, all the time you’ve been reading this, you’ve been missing something on TV.